Charades

The recent Komen cure vs. Planned Parenthood battle has brought a few distractions to light:

Americans like to argue about who cares more about life.

Life, for the sides, carries different definitions.

It's a distraction, this bickering about whether a fetus is alive enough to be human; it's a distraction, these non sequiturs about whether it's a good idea to allow someone to undo a bad decision (either her own, a shared one, or one forced on her by an attacker of some kind).

The thing is, abortion is still a legal option, a legal medical procedure in our country. Sure, Ms. Roe reportedly regrets her decision. I think she regrets more the fact that she was placed on stage about it. I work for attorneys these days, and I have hints about what might go on in a trial or beforehand, the nitty gritty that compels a person to go under oath and fight for something.

The case lingered so long that she had the child anyway, and so, of course, she must face her offspring with the sentiment that it would have been wrong to have killed her/him off. Of course. And she's no one, I'm sorry, to speak for how people who have actually had abortions feel afterwards. Perhaps she knew then what the "now" felt like, but she doesn't know now what the after feels like.

We are all on different experience trains, after all.

I read that Planned Parenthood received a huge increase in "outrage" donations, supposedly surpassing what Komen's grants provide on an annual basis.

I wonder whether that was an unplanned or intended consequence — or if it was just another of those things to make me think that, no, there can't be any grand conspiracies because humans are so dreadfully disorganized. We end up so often with things we did not intend.

Intention brings me back to my reason for rambling: no one who doesn't want to have children intends for a particular sex act to create a child. Of course, s/he can take certain steps to add to the probability that procreation will not occur, but, we all know this: nothing is 100 percent effective. This does not address, either, rape victims' lack of being able to choose the act in the first place.

However, a woman who takes the daunting step to approach a doctor (whether in a "clinic" such as Planned Parenthood, albeit a safer-feeling place than the alternative — going to a hospital and asking an ER intake clerk what to do or even being terribly upfront enough to go to the primary care provider, provided one has one at all), that woman has one intention. Well, perhaps two.

The first is to determine whether she is truly pregnant. Some hope that the drugstore test was, somehow, wrong. Most know that their bodies are saying, "No, it's all quite happening."

The second is, I'm sorry, in order to find a way to avoid the physical transformation, on the one hand, and the life-long literal responsibility, on the other. Yes, women who go to get abortions want to get abortions. It's not a secret.

But they are not evil.

They are in a place most of you reading won't ever be. Abortions are still a minority experience, even when we add in men whose babies were terminated either with their consent or against their will.

It's very specific. It's very personal. It's almost always very horrible, even if the little one inside who is causing moral upheaval, physical distress, emotional turmoil … is a creation from someone she loves deeply.

And, I'm sorry, but it's still legal in the United States of America and a number of other countries.

On another law-related topic, it was pointed out to me by my husband that we abide by a skewed set of standards: women are always generally given control of whether a baby is born or not. (Please lay aside the forced-to-term births by controlling men over abused women or by obstructive laws that have waiting periods, consents, or that require women by their circumstance of residency / local politics to travel long distances for what is, to them, at the time, freedom.)

For example: a woman can tell a man she is on the Pill. She can say this even if she is not, and if/when she becomes pregnant, the man is responsible for financial support of the borne offspring. He may or may not be allowed any custody or visitation rights. Is that fair? (I acknowledge that a man can lie about a vasectomy or can take off a condom without a woman's knowledge … but that baby, if one is created, is still his responsibility; he's in a power-position, but she still retains the legal right to avoid it, and his duplicity does not change the fact that she, in the end, has the power of procreation and of what we label choice.)

For example: a woman might become pregnant without the intention or either party, even if one or both of them are using a birth control feature in good faith, yet, it is she and she alone, who gets to decide whether that fetus/baby lives. "My body, my choice" is supposed to be empowering to females, but I can't help but see how it shuts out the other genetic contributor. Is that fair? I think I am missing a feminist piece of history. I've been alive only as long as American abortion has been legal.

When I lived in Japan 14 years ago, I learned that for them, abortion was a sanctioned form of birth control and somewhat widespread. The Japanese also are the leading consumers of condoms. I don't know: perhaps they buy them on conscience but don't use them? Sounds familiar.

I also learned that a woman has to have the signed consent of the paternal entity (would you rather I say "baby's father?") in order to have an abortion. And that Japanese health care providers, like many pro-life activists in our country wish ours all did, automatically do an ultrasound, which shows, that, yup, there's a living, cute little person in there. It's not just a positive stripe on a test.

My point is that our laws are irrational. They claim one thing and accomplish another. And also that the most "life-protecting" policies do not insure that women somehow will stop using this last-resort, a choice that is often quite thought-out, and often un-blithe, very visceral and very permanent but chosen as necessary; as way of controlling their own destiny, it, in short, works.

I would encourage you to read the book, Jane, if you think women will stop getting abortions, even dangerous ones, as this story explains, if the law of the land prevents it.

I agree that all life is sacred. But I also observe that we, all the time, make choices about others' lives. I don't donate food to shelters nor offer up my own too-spacious home to shelter those who need it. I don't have resources to sustain my so-called lifestyle, yet I'm not providing a nursery for some alone-and-pregnant person. I do put my money where my mouth is, which is to say, barely anywhere. I acknowledge that we all are selfish, but I likewise can say I am no hypocrite.

I have committed theft, but I have only twice lied, and only to a lover, when I was quite young and very confused. The stealing amounted to taking a five-dollar bill from a sidewalk, a coffee maker from a college psychology department "chill room," and, when I was five, a daffodil from a neighbors' yard to give to my mother; around the same time, I ate a gumball from a five-and-dime, because it was spilled on the floor and seemed like a sample.

Therefore, I find the touted "must save all life" rhetoric of the mislabeled pro-life side to ring untrue.

Yes, some have adopted disadvantaged children. Many, many children remain.

Yes, killing anyone is wrong; however, we don't seem to mind the death penalty, the trillion-dollar military wars … including the "war on drugs" that puts tens of thousands of people in jail in our country and also at a disproportionally non-white rate (creating orphans) and that kills, especially in our coordination with Mexico (through violence I can't understand) tens of thousands of people who don't even fucking smoke pot.

Humans will always have contradictions and anomalies. I just wish we could be honest about them. We are wasting so much time pretending.

Pretending is something I understood to be something children did.

I used to play house. Not the sexual kind, just making food and tending to dolls.

I used to play army. Not the malicious kind, just going through maneuvers with toys in the gravel driveway.

I used to play office. Yes, the exact kind I feel a bit condemned to to this very day.

Circa Dec. 2001

i am tired:

tired of paper,

shuffling steps,

slick edges that bite

and keyboard hunches,

florescent light,

skipped and rushed lunches

then dull, lonely nights

of dry tasks at home,

darkness of walls

under high, cracked ceilings

with a brain unbright, sad,

yes, those are my feelings

between working and bed,

the dull, lonely nights

despite constant company

from a lover, no less,

whose profession is passion,

which both delights and drowns,

like seashores, where inaction

leads unswimmers sinking naturally down

into dull, lonely nights

unflickering with transluscent wings

lofting insect smiles that could buzz

the heartstrings of one

for whom dinner was made

hours after the sun

faded and my hunger set, delayed

for dull, lonely nights,

small, unseen cages to catch joy

and throw it away

while he studies and draws

i stumble, fall, locked into petty tasks,

floors followed with broomstraw,

profound questions unasked

during dull, lonely nights.

Things To Do

Finish lunch.

Find job for me.

Find job for him.

File bills.

Deposit checks.

Write check to IRS.

Pick up spewed medicine cabinet contents from bathroom floor.

Wash bathroom floor.

Move bathroom mirror.

Patch bathroom plaster.

Sweep and swiffer every other rooms' floors.

Clean birdcages.

De-dust multiple surfaces.

Determine why I'm unable to part with old magazines, tourist publications, and other mail that is "pretty."

Determine why I'm unable to part with old clothes that are not ruined but do not fit.

Determine why I still have:

Christmas ornaments, an aluminum tree and two color-wheels;
a box of yarn my mom discarded, some skeins of which are older than I am;
a box of t-shirt fabric my grandmother left behind;
a porcelain doll in the original box from my great aunt;
a gold rosary from my grandmother;
an Austrian crystal rosary from my other grandmother;
bottle of gunky dark blue nail polish purchased in Paris for $2 in 1996;
two extremely outdated laptops I'm afraid to turn on to see whether any data (old writing) is salvageable;
my original bed from childhood;
ashes from two cats and one budgie;
a carafe-less Boden French-press coffee pot;
two hammocks from Vietnam that have never been hung;
an office chair in the hallway from a former job;
four Duncan Phyfe chairs that no one can sit on;
a small pile of rusted found metal objects on the patio;
a filing cabinet full of old artwork, school papers, paints, Sun Magazines and other people's manuscripts and art-postcards;
a box of fossils;

the original wood-frame windows from my last apartment when the landlord did an upgrade;
10 plastic alligators from a 2008 Mardi gras costume;
a Kelty hiking backpack that hasn't been used since 2003;
a black velvet dress I found in a roachy box at an antique store during high school that I took in clumsily and ruined;
a pale silk dress I found at a thrift store during college that was always too big and has a pen-mark on it;
storage tub full of copies of hand-written letters I sent to boys before the Internet existed;
two antique and very heavy bicycles;
two fishing poles and one reel from the 1980s that my dad gave me and that we used to use;
a 10-foot circular wool rug that my mom didn't want anymore but that will never match my decor;
cookie cutters;
unpaired earrings;
my first pair of earrings,
two punch bowls and associated cups that I got for a 2000 New Year's party;
my wedding shoes that are stained;
a box of bird feathers;
a tooth, whisker and collar from my first cat;
my first grey hair;
a book a friend wrote that I purchased in hardback that I think sucks;
two books another friend wrote that are excellent but that I can't read;
four high school yearbooks;
birthday cards spanning decades;
diaries that I wrote but that sound like they are from another human entirely;
this blog.

The answer for most items is the same. Or similar. It does not rhyme with hoarding, but it also is why Buddha won't come over to visit. I am excruciatingly sentimental. Not just with things. I am the kind of person who can re-connect on Facebook with an ex-boyfriend after 20 years and quote to him what he told me about his grandparents. I am the kind of person who can write a letter to my younger brother on his 21st birthday and list all the things we used to do growing up that I loved, only to have him tell me he had not remembered any of them (until then). The kind of person who didn't have to look at or for any of the things listed above with my eyes to know they exist and where they are stored.

In the house, we also have a piece of slate and a broken salad-oil bottle from Joplin's giant tornado. They were supposed to have been used in an artwork that would have been sold or auctioned in a benefit, but the artist I live with is like me sometimes. You can't always get to creating; items pile up as ideas unfulfilled. The ruse is that it's all potential energy and materials.

Knowing so ridiculously intimately about all the objects/things I possess, I wonder, truly, what it's like to lose them all in one fell swoop, such as by tornado, fire or even theft. I imagine their absence would plague me as much as their presence. I still lament and catalog items and places from childhood, high school, college, Japan, etc. that are no longer with me in a literal or tangible way. I carry them around.

One of the science shows on PBS that I have only seen clips of told us that there is a high probability of multiple, simultaneous universes. I wish I could live a very, very long time and see so many more things like this explained. When I was a child, I used to believe that, "When you died and went to Heaven," all would be revealed — you would have access to all time, all places, and all knowledge. You could travel anywhere and look down on Earth and watch it unfold. I still want that to be true, though even a so-called new-age view that we all are one / all is energy, etc. does not provide enough hope/faith/comfort to me that there is anything to look forward to once you don't have access anymore to your things, such as your body.

I have been working for about 150 days at a small law firm, and one of the attorneys specializes in probate-type matters. In other words: "What Happens to You When You Can't Take Care of Yourself and/or Your Money and/or You Die." Having a man who is approximately my parents' age come in to drop off his annual conservatorship report for the court about his aunt who has been in a decline for more than a year, hearing him explain about his photocopies and lists that the safe-deposit box was closed out, the headstone was purchased, the furniture and piano were sold off, shows what it all comes down to.

Unless you have some progeny who will do things like save a carpet, a box of yarn, fishing poles, a four-postered bed frame that originated from the nurses' quarters at Barnes Hospital 80 years ago, your religious objects … or, I guess, someone who attaches her own new meaning to objects that came from others' families ('70s punch bowls, clothing, furniture) … or who can't let go of certain gifts or items that represent experiences … no — there is no unless. This just is what it is: humans who are post-agrarian and whose memories seem to depend now on things.

Yet, I do sometimes detach myself from items.

I do give away clothes. I even gave away a wedding present that was perfectly fine, had some functionality and was from someone I love. Clutter. I donated away a waffle iron my dad had gotten for me at an estate sale. Impossible to clean. Last week, I set the television, a DVD player, the digital converter box, and another TV that only worked as a VCR-playing device (and VCR) out on the curb because I was irritated with the accumulation; three of the five objects had been in a cabinet for months, if not years.

To be fair to my sense of recycling: I did not expect the city trash service to take them; I was hoping someone who wanted them or who was a wire-salvager would be on the receiving end. The electronics were not in a bag — in this two-bag-limit, our-landfill-is-too-full town. The city trash collectors are the same ones who, a few weeks ago, would not take a large charcoal bag of trash because the contract recycling collectors had put a sticker on it that said: "Oops, not recyclable." Or they had gotten there first and presumed it was a "leaf bag."

I still have six aluminum ice cube trays, and they are not in the freezer.

Next to them on the deacon's bench is a snowman-shaped vase filled with candy canes from last Christmas.

2 random

******

1984 prediction

Someday when all your "stuff" is on "the Cloud," and the only "stuff" you care about is not tangible but only intellectual property and data, don't come crying to me when "they" pull the plug and you are more destitute than someone who's just had a house-fire.

Do they sell Cloud Insurance?

All your books, bills, writing, music, photo-memories, etc. — gone. Likely you will have paid to have it there. And it's likely that the System won't have the resources to care or to act. It might be the System that de-Guttenbergs us all for reasons that should be, in 2011, quite obvious.

I want the cloud to be my surrogate hoarder so I can live like a Buddhist, but there's no way I'm trusting something that is made of vaporous water, server-farms (powered by coal/nuclear/etc.), and profits. I loathe to carry them, and I can't get far with 100 boxes of paper, but I like books.

My Depression-era ancestors, if they had perhaps been the gold-in-the-well / currency-in-the-mattress types, have me as progeny.

"And that's the way it is, blzzzzzz." — L.T.

Vacuous

We measure things in months, which vary in the number of sunrises, on a cycle of 12. By that standard, it's been more than one. By another standard, it's been about three.

I think it's a consequence of A) my not being at liberty to be on the Internet any time I feel inspired; B) the fact that I am not often inspired in general, even as unrelated to my so-called indentured v. free time.

Tasks include: photocopy and sort; shop for supplies; endure leers and odd comments from process server known to be inexpensive, effective, and creepy; re-sort 1,000-page items into categories sub-arranged by date, ascending … given that said pages are as randomized as a jar of sand; answer door on lower level 3-7 times a day; answer a cheery, "Yes?!" whenever one of three beckon-ers decides to call (and it's not like we're all that close — shouting, it's some kind of wave of the future … I am subordinate and so send "you get to it when you can" emails — some of which are answered with a shout) … it's a bit like living with the bad parts of certain stepparents and others from my past.

For 10 dollars an hour. No benefits. No paid vacation, not even Labor Day.

Wrecking my chances? To sell you my time and rent you my brain? Maybe being hungry is just as well. I need to lose 20 pounds anyway, and I'm always "lamenting" the surplus of odd items and things (all old; nothing here is new by any means, except certain foods) collecting up in this glorified treehouse we have a mortgage on.

So, I haven't blogged (can't get used to this verb) in more than a month. Not since it was 100 degrees, 50 more than it will be tonight. Tomorrow is Monday, and Monday in the proper capitalized sense. Some people have to work on them, so I can see it's no great leap to have me have the day off but without pay. It's only convention, after all.

I think I have a mind to go cemetery-walking. I haven't seen collective personal monuments in years. I let a silverfish live today, and I'm not sure whether it was out of laziness or fear of having it fall into the bed, or a false sense of "live and let live." To the gross critter that has come to symbolize my failure, it doesn't matter; it's doing fine.

Laugh-Rite

As has my signature, over my lifetime, my laugh has changed. I noted this phenom. decades ago, and I didn't know how to explain it. I didn't engineer the changes, either; they just happened. I did sometimes act to correct or curtail them. The process has always felt … meta.

If you are of a certain age, you can peg Rosanne Barr's 'ha,' or even Johnny Carson's chuckle, Chris Rock's blast-laugh, etc. We could all come up with many examples; a favorite would be Mr. Jones's doing Darth Vadar.

My first passport (I'm only on the second) had amendments to my signature on the official first inside page. I was conscientious to note for the state departments that I acknowledged a seemingly sudden change in my "legal" way of representing myself with a pen. It went from having most of the 10 letters to a mere stylized version of my initials, a joined set of two marks.

I don't know why.

There was no circumstance to make it so, such as having to sign 100 Christmas cards or business letters. Suddenly, one of my driver's license had A, and the next and subsequent documents B.

People remark on it, more often than I'd think is warranted. I have never commented out loud on anyone's "john hancock," though I'm very interested in calligraphy, especially as it pertains to "the signature," be it on a painting/drawing/etc. or on a legal document or just a letter. The latter in this three-part example-chain is quite rare, I know. But I continue to study people's signatures the way a dog studies smells, perhaps. I just don't have any conclusions to draw.

So I do things like save cards from mom, dad, grandparents. Their signatures (only the lattermost) have changed over the years. Like their land-line home-phone voicemail messages, the signatures of my parents have not moved as long as I've known/seen them (with the exception of my mother's — but I never read her name when she used to sign it using mine/my father's; the font is the same).

My signature has not changed in at least a decade. I have an alternate one I use for business letters; it is in part so I can't be "stolen," but mostly so it looks more human, thoughtful and readable.

One of my college-era diaries has a frontpiece where I would record my new signatures. Some were experimental, some were actual documentation of a rapidly changing personal history. I'm pretty sure I could revert/resurrect any one of them.

My laugh of late reminds me of my sister-in-law's. This would be the younger one, my brother's wife. I think I have a subconscious desire to mimic her genuine happiness. It's consciously known now — look, I discovered it.

No one I know has ever remarked upon my laugh. I have heard things like "don't smile enough," "are you having fun?," "what are you thinking?," etc. My laughs have always sounded outside of my head, and I am curious what they might mean to anyone else. They are supposed to sound like music or at least be usefully infectious.

Incomplete comprehension and poor rhyme (meter is decent but not perfect)

Fat-footed giant fly

likely emerged from the woodwork

Like all the arthropods in this domicile do,

I find you less intelligent than the spiders,

and conveniently that explains a lot.

It makes sense to a human trying to

Order the world as we do.

We don't take in things

at face value but attempt to

Create just as so-named God is supposed to do.

I find us less intelligent than the spiders,

and conveniently that explains a lot.

It makes no sense to me watching my bird die

while I then choose to kill you.

Safari (Mac web browser)

this house (orig. of Mr. Price, who made his fortune along the Missouri River somehow) has belonged to the sisters (Benedictine of Atchison) for a while now, perhaps 20 years or so, and if you can find any data on his first name, etc., you are a better search-engine guru than I; it is not right not to have such data ((heard from a nun's head)) easily found on a library site online; it's a pretty house ((I was inside)), and I envy anyone who lived there or works there now, except I'm sure that 150+ years ago it was not a "fun" place to be, nor would I like to be a sister up in nowhere-KS)

RE: subject line — it does not seem to offer anything better than "delete history after 1 day."

Google/Firefox says it does not store at all, if one choses "do not store."

I do not know whom to believe. I should say "which company" in lieu of "whom," but the Supreme Court and then … (that one fellow running for president) said that corporations are people. Long live English-as-it-evolves.

In other news: 1.5-hr. call with Dad today = he sounds like life is all about having trouble breathing. He called around 2, and I was cleaning; I called back around 4 and he was "just getting up from a nap."

He will be 75 on Saturday.

My mother's father turned 82 on Friday; he had quad-bypass surgery on my birthday (about a month ago) and is doing well enough (better than my dad).

Both have heart disease and are thereby way American.

Both have excellent health care (yay, Medicare + union pension / fed. gov't insurance). They both have opinions that are political (and opposite), and that makes me laugh (until I look at my own prospects).

Guess which is which, and I shall send you something random and perhaps valuable from my home/art/collections. I promise it will not be a 12-year-old cat that howls randomly, unless you are in need of a grey-and-white being who "can see dead people."

I had a point, but now it's just a tech rant

Thank you, Firefox, for so-called blocking redirection notice but then letting what I typed in myself through. I surmise you have a special agreement with the Google. Funny how "hard" it is to post to one's own stupid blog.

I used to use two different browsers, FF for "work" and Safari for "play," and now I remember why.

It's the same annoyance at not being able to have two Excel files simultaneously open at once on the Windows 7 (you know, the one that's like Mac OS X and beyond); Word is different — umm, are you not all the same program; do you think we're all so silly we can't tell which XLS file is in view? Me no get it.

PS, there's this silly stuff as evidenced by image above. Google+, anyone? I think not (I).

Have stopped photo-posting

Not having images is a death-throe (is the hyphen necessary) to any online (or printed article, except for the WSJ, and we all know who bought that old thing).

I agree.

Throes can last quite a long time.

Brown recluse spiders apparently can live five to ten years. I once met one who was about that age.

I am tired of meeting certain things (in specific circumstances).

Curb Girl, as she was / as it were, does not walk about as much; it is a known fact that many of her digi-pics were produced with the aid of a motorized vehicle (that died from oil-spill and led to a mere blah tax deduction, a full year before "cash for clunkers" was concieved, and that fact still rankles me : )

When she does, she's usually late (read: can't spare time to stop and snap), or, the route is so routine that there is nothing of interest to note.

Also, the camera is heavy.

As is water.

Choices are not Sophie-like all the time; they are easy.

Waning

I don't have the heart to make notes and then go into the blogroll editor to remove all the places that no longer exist.

There are others, too, like me and Vietnamese God and Fallout, Architectonikos, etc., that have waned to infrequency.

We all got bored or something?

Packaging

After leaving childhood and the need to occupy the morning blankness while eating my cereal, I ceased to be influenced by any kind of food-box design.

I "see" the fonts and the clever Serving Suggestion photos, but all I read and respond to is the Nutrition Facts chart relegated to the side. Note: there must be a minimum size requirement or ratio — do you resent the federal government getting involved in that? Note 2: their food groups gave way to a food pyramid, but, Americans not being into such shapes (except on the back of their Greenback), the graphic was switched to a plate. Long live the simple pie-chart.

In September 2012, while the nation is a-buzz with a presidential campaign, the former-smoker commander-in-chief will be defending his health care law, his handling of the economy, and, I guess, his administration's decision to cut tax revenue by trying to reduce cigarette sales.

Fourteen months from now, new gruesome and design-ugly labeling will be required on packs of cigs. This, after the tobacco companies were prohibited from using words like "light" or "mild" to differentiate between kinds of smokes within their brand.

Who responds to packaging? We all do, but it only goes so far.

The official media on it says that 20 percent of us smoke in this country, despite the Surgeon General's warnings and the constricting local laws about where one is allowed to light up. They say that while smoking has decreased since its hey-day (a novel I just finished reading has the 1941 pregnant woman on Lucky Strikes over and over and without irony), youngsters continue to smoke, helping to populate the persistent 20-percent group that includes those who never quit.

Well, that's not so bad, considering how many of us still eat beef several times a week — and who might be eating hormone-laden, over-processed beef at that, along with food products containing a list of ingredients that take up more space on boxes and vacuum bags than the corresponding nutrition (or lack of nutrition) information chart. (If that were turned into a pie chart, you'd find that half would be labeled "sodium.")

What will you say when they start posting pictures of yellowed fat cells on McDonald's bags, of diabetic amputated foot-stubs on cookie boxes? Rotted teeth adorning our ice cream cartons … fat guts overhanging pants-lines emblazoned on our Doritos bags …

As an aside, one hardly needs new graphic intervention: at the supermarket, Wal-Mart, fast-food establishment and elsewhere, there are plenty of real-life examples of what happens to your body if you continually make certain choices. We ate at a Freddy's (it's like a cheap counter-service Steak-n-Shake in mid-Kansas) on our way back from Colorado, and everyone in there, except the Menonnites and/or Amish were globby-shaped, even the kiddos. Don't get me wrong: I love burgers and skinny fries … even shakes, and I didn't wuss out and get some salad or just have an apple or something, but I try try try not to eat burgers as often as I wish (which would be every day — which I should try so that I get sick of them, perhaps, the way I have gotten sick of apples. I probably eat 3 beef-related products a month, not counting cheese — quick, make a label for my hormone-free imported cheddar that shows a clogged artery …).

The persistence of tobacco use seems due to a few factors: one, as stated above, visual cues do not work. (Have you seen the visual evidence against methamphetamine use, for example? Good gracious, they look like smokers times 1,000, but people decide to start using that drug anyway.) I recall that the Bodies exhibition (the controversial one that used Chinese people whose credentials and consent were cloudy) had a healthy lung / smoker lung in side-by-side cases, along with a depository where one could, if so shocked and motivated, get rid of one's cigarettes. I should follow up and see whether anyone did.

Two: young people feel immortal and are always going to make not-so-great decisions. It's our prerogative as youngsters that we get to make mistakes. I shall not be listing mine here at this time — ancient history — but I can count on you to recall yours and presume that I have done my share of risky and risqué behaviors over the years — and consider — I'm someone who has words like summa cum laude in her past. Just think of all the blog comments you read from people whose words indicate both a lack of English training and an absence of critical thinking skills: of course, people start smoking or do meth or whatever. And, teens especially are not going to be swayed away by gore. They have been brought up on it, after all; the fact that we have such violence on regular television and other media displayed all red and creepy is one reason, I suspect, that this new cigarette packaging seemed like a "normal" thing for our society to do.

Three: (related to #2) the negative effects of smoking tobacco are nearly invisible and do not show up in short order. In other words, people smoke and smoke, a bit like how some drink and drink or even eat and eat, without severe near-term consequences. Sure, you have a hard time walking up the stairs. Yes, your clothes are stinky and your teeth get a little yellower than you'd like. Good news! There are products to handle that all over the market. But it takes years and years to wear yourself down toward death-by-nicotine (or smoke inhalation). Humans were designed only to live 40 to 50 years in the first place.

Face it, you've seen perhaps five people in your life carting around their O2 tanks. I've known, (and in a sense was rather removed in both cases, though I spent time with each of these men), exactly two people who died from lung cancer that was probably caused by their prolonged tobacco use over decades. I've known far more with breast and prostate cancer. Of course, let's not forget about Grandma So-and-so, who smoked all her life and didn't die until the age of 91.

Oh, heart disease is a top killer, but we rather run about and accept that as "normal," too, I guess. It's not acquired solely from smoking anyway, so …

We know that people generally don't respond to knowledge rapidly; smoking is pleasant for some (and addictive to most), fats and sugars taste damn good, and condoms are tedious and uncomfortable (another topic for another day — I hear that because AIDS is somewhat "curable" in folks' opinions that they are less inclined to suit up against infection these days).

Even price does not deter much … we're as collectively addicted to water and gasoline as we are cigarettes. I can't remember who it was who told a story about arriving at our Midwest airport and asking about buying cigs, but whomever he talked to said, "Well, they're expensive here," at something like $8 a pack. He laughed because he was used to paying much more than that. Probably in New York. Yeah, my memory is crummy, and my external editor is not going to cut this useless section of text : )

I don't feel that the new packaging rules for cigarettes sold in the United States will make a difference – except to the basis of free speech. Marcia Coyle, who regularly reports on the Supreme Court, said recently on the PBS Newshour, in a summary of our current justices' trends, that they rule for companies when it comes to the First Amendment. I expect the challenges expected from Philip Morris (aka Nabisco/Kraft and a bunch of wine brands besides), RJR Reynolds (it's interesting the differences on their corporate homepages, isn't it?) et al will receive due process and are likely to be upheld.

For why should any one product be required to alter its packaging with gruesome images, when other, arguably equally harmful items go merrily along with happy colors and claims of puppies and rainbows in pleasing fonts and tones?

There is also the argument, alluded to above, that government should not be interfering with marketing strategy whatsoever, especially when that strategy is a commonly accepted part of society. Granted, it's been illegal to show anyone actually drinking beer or liquor in a beer or spirits commercial on television or to show any cigarette ad there for years, and I guess that was the start of the slippery slope; never fear, we have bladder, depression, heart disease and other prescription med ads in their place — and lots of truck ads … lots of truck ads.

Here I am sounding like a "conservative," and I resent any such labels on me, one way or the other; part of what makes my country un-great is its duality hang-up and inability to elucidate or even discuss nuance.

I do have faith, however, in the resilience of the American consumer. Leave aside for a moment the fact that tobacco products constitute the largest illegally sold drug in the world (tax evasion), and leave there, too, the fact that our U.S. tobacco companies make most of their profits abroad (and in "food"). Those 20 percent of Americans are still going to smoke; just look at any high school or college campus.

Given the new labeling laws, I predict a forthcoming retooling of cigarette display racks (unless the lawmakers thought it through and prohibited that, too); since the bold, garish, dissuasive section of the newly minted packs will be on top, I forsee a way that packs will be inserted upwards. Don't they already do it this way at convenience stores, the ones that the clerk has to reach overhead for, as if from a rearview mirror where you stash your toll tickets and sunglasses?

There also will be a resurgence of the classic cigarette case, only the hardcase models will be tall enough to accommodate the larger filtered cigs that most people smoke today, not the stubby ones you find in antique stores. The soft cases have unlimited potential. Artists have a great opportunity to get knitting, forging, engraving, etc. And there's always the sexy roll-your-own route; no need either to inhale a million non-tobacco over-addictive chemicals or to see a cadaver who supposedly died from smoking. (I want someone, maybe Harper's, to publish the consent form on that one … it makes me not want to body-donate, you know, knowing that maybe my picture could be used for advertising the negative effects of getting a liberal arts degree.)

Do I smoke? No, not really. I have smoked, both as a second-hander child of two parents and then occasionally under stress, in foreign countries, or under alcohol-induced what-have-you when someone else had them around. Nicotine makes me ill in an immediate way, though, and I can only look on wistfully while watching Casablanca or when reading Camus. I always wanted it to be fun, to smoke; however, it just isn't. Still, I am disheartened by the regulations that say menthol or clove or other flavored cigarettes are illegal now, simply because "children" apparently are attracted to them. Let me tell you, my first cigarette was stolen from a parent, and my first enjoyed cigarette was, in fact, a clove product.

I also once bought some cloves and a pack of "fun" English cigs with my mother (in my 20s) before going to a film with her at an art theatre. I still disparage both her and my father for smoking, especially smoking in front of me (on me), but I am a kettle and I do not preach much to the pots. I just chalk it up as "well, I'll smell gross now," and try to move on. I do hugely appreciate the (overreaching?) legislation (often grass-roots initiated) that has made smoking in most bars and restaurants a thing of the past.

The rules against tobacco use are, as my mom points out, counter to the present-day push for the legalization of marijuana (which is largely smoked), though I would say that pot can be ingested. Also, it is causing tens of thousands of deaths due to its prohibition status and should probably be legalized and then dealt with through education and fun new packaging, I guess. Cigarettes are a choice, living under the violent rule of drug lords is not.

Just think, you could unwrap your medical, "non-Mexico certified" MJ from cellophane that depicts a burned-out loser. Well, until we see labels on liquor that say more than "don't drink if you're pregnant or drive/operate machinery if you drink," that's quite a silly pipe-dream, I'm sure, and the laser-beam attack on one genre of sin-product is unbalanced.

Not to mention: it won't work.

Contractors

they mean it

Dear T__, You are scheduled for a Genius Bar appointment. What: Mac When: Saturday, April 23, 2011 at 10:45AM Where: Apple Store, Country Club Plaza Please be sure to check in when you arrive. Any Apple Store employee will be happy to assist you. We look forward to seeing you. Your Apple Store team, Country Club Plaza P.S. It's now even easier to make an Apple Store reservation with the Apple Store app for iPhone and iPod touch. Download the Apple Store app now Apple Store, Country Club Plaza Add this to your calendar If you are no longer able to attend this session, please cancel or reschedule your reservation. Get directions to the store

I was kind-of hoping for a shut-down

When I type, "si" in the address bar, it goes to this page; this format is neither https: (it never logs one out — mailchimp and wordpress do at the drop of a hat or the change of an hour) nor gets cleared during "reset Safari."

Who is silly enough to think that a safari can be undone? That lion pride saw you, those giraffes noted the Jeep, and the birds did not care, as is their nature.

What can I do to receive better? I give what some note is plenty, and, of course, there is more, but I need it for neurotic responses to "laundry monsters," bathroom dust-bunnies, and dried random splatters (we have hard water here, recall), and for sleeping.

Where(as) I hear praise and feel happy, more and more often I mostly see through it to the response-action that I take as a result — and it amounts to my being led along an "I love you but I beat you," go-to-a-shelter-type relationship.

Why shouldn't I be looking for a mere safe-haven, a "screw 'dreams'" secure position … I can think of a number of places I could be fine; it's good to know I've ruled out anything with a G involved in its pay structure.

How they, by the way, want to inform me of whatever is interesting. I suppose I should go pick up the cert. mail … I used to know the tech. term for this on the "inside," tee hee, flushed, yes, unless I go into a trance … (I should go get it just in case it's a real issue and not just a personnel one).

Still, I know they haven't processed my resignation docs yet, and so, I think I shall wait for the next cycle of bureaucracy. It's funny, car or no in the driveway, the postal carrier never knocks, just leaves the pale orange card in with the other letters, catalogs, and junk.

Even if we had had a government shut-down, the mail was going to stay open, they said. Parks, no, too expensive, I'm sure, but the in-debt USPS has its own revenue stream (donates to the Olympics, etc.).

I don't know how the IRS can stop processing mail altogether, anyway (as my former colleagues' jobs would have been furloughed had Congress and Obama, et. al. not come to an "agreement"), since their legitimacy rests in post-marks (and you get 2-3 days' grace anyway); the news is saying 18th, but we were told 19th. Isn't that interesting? Did it change? Still, you get a moment or two after whichever is the date.

We went to the Asian market a half-block northeast of the City Market. The goal was chili-garlic paste, but we got $20.35 (tax included) of sauces and 5 non-American ramen/rice noodle packets … and an instant coconut almond-flavored agar (seaweed/non-hoof gelatin) dessert packet, and some soba noodles.

Then we re-parked and bought $4's worth of cayenne. The Al-Habashi scooper did not question me.

Then we drove to 20th and then Southwest Boulevard to La Esquina so I could take photographs/ see what I was editing about.

A friend of ours was in staffing, so we stayed longer than expected, talking; the Styrofoam peanut volcano was clogged. The motor was running, but nothing was spewing. It was hot in there; an unexpected delight were the found (and framed), generally small and invariably black-and-white or sepia or even silvery (technical term #576 not found) photographs of disasters. Burned houses, overturned stone homes, fires, crashes, people running to under white parasols, and people running from, disasters.

You have to get gardening knee-pads to view them, however; or, if you are a child or don't mind being uncomfortable while you try to rubber-neck (like on the highway, you have to divide your attention), you can crouch and scoot from image to image.

Did I mention that our chair didn't forward an invoice … 3 weeks ago … and now, well, let's just say, "Hmm, I haven't been not-paid in a long time now, it seems. I'm doing my part … why …?"

Anyway, at least I've been flossing for a number of days (a higher ratio than can be recalled; look, no double-dip dental recession for her!).

First of all (apparently, I am only ever to be G3)

I have to say that, a week after I sent in my, "Yes, you missed my resignation, etc.," I got another, "If you continue to be AWOL, you will be AWOL" letter (all at an 80-something-¢ postage charge for the Feds by the Feds).

This is evidence why I can't believe in "conspiracy." It's just like Dell or AT&T — they will allow some employee to say whatever (lowest common denominator) and then hedge on your not following through. Ask me for examples : )

And then to receive (they always send that which arrives in email on a Saturday, I might add), a silly thing such as this (which shows you, if true, how desperate the job-market has become — or at least was 5 months ago when we all applied for this other position):

_________________________________

Department of the Treasury

Internal Revenue Service
Employment Section II (KC)
Delegated Examining Unit
P.O. Box 24551
Kansas City, MO 64131
March 26, 2011

CLERK (OA)
ANNOUNCEMENT NUMBER: 10KC2-WIX0032B-303-4
GRADE: GS-04


Dear T__________:

Thank you for your interest in the above position with the Internal Revenue Service.

We regret to inform you that your score was not high enough for you to be considered. Regulations require that selection(s) must be made in score order. Unfortunately, we had more applicants than positions.

We encourage your continued interest in a position with the Internal Revenue Service and hope that you will visit www.usajobs.gov for future job opportunities with our agency.

If you have any questions, please contact this office at 816-291-9400.


Sincerely,
Employment Section II (KC)

_______________

My dad and my oldest non-great aunt have retired from this monster, the latter only a few days ago. He is not having fun; she is, with bicycles and an RV and all that one wishes for. I was originally here to talk about that.

Daughter is smart not to call back (after message just now, a return from my message six hours ago) father who is, by message, she knows, a bit drunk, not so much that one can't drive sans checkpoints, but still.

I guess there is more snow there, 270 or so miles to the east-south-east than here.

Tax dollars at work

You tell me they want you to know.

Yes, a website is great, and in comparison to driving to the capital, ridiculously excellent; however, those who can't sit through hours of rambling live broadcast (due to funding) are relegated to "regular voter; sit tight and wait."

Meanwhile, the elected go on a spring break.

Don't know about public worker staff.

Sigh.

Here is some mail, the last bit of which has not been sent (to a public information officer of my state's legislature):

Hi, X,

Sorry to have caught you after-hours earlier; it was not clear when the vote might happen … and, last year, it took several days.

I don't have an iPhone : ) but I'm online most of the time due to responsibilities.

Your answer was prompt, but it was vague.

The bill text as passed (unless I am not looking in the right place …) is still not online.

Can you be more specific about when the true-text will be posted? As an aside / because I'd like to learn, are not these items recorded immediately (in audio)?

Thank you for your consideration,

me.

On Mar 15, 2011, at 5:07 PM, X wrote:Hi you, the bill should be available on the house website, www.house.mo.gov as soon as the text is finalized, just search for HB 7. Let me know if you need anything else.

X

Sent from my iPhone

On Mar 15, 2011, at 5:00 PM, "i" <> wrote:

Hello, X,

We're covering Missouri Arts Council Funding, and I was wondering if you had a copy of HB 7 as amended and passed today.

(We do not have resources to be in Jefferson City or listen to the full debates when they are in progress.)

I would like to see the bill as passed ASAP, if possible (and at least to know when your staff will have it posted on the General Assembly website).

Or – if you can, please let me know what the MAC portion of the bill was in advance of the full text's being posted on the site.

Thank you, working on a deadline (of course : )

Sincerely,

x.